Box Score 1 | Box Score 2 GRINNELL, Iowa – The Grinnell College baseball team closed out the regular season with a split against Cornell College Sunday afternoon at Pioneer Park.
 
The Pioneers pounded out 17 hits in the opener en route to a 12-2 win that was ended in the eighth inning due to the mercy rule. Cornell came back with a 9-2 win in the second game.
 
In the opener, Matt Hammond '17 was 4-for-4 at the plate with four RBI and two runs scored. Walker Bell '15 added three hits, while Niko Takayesu '17, Anthony Mack '16, Matt Godinsky '16 and Kainoa Inafuku '14 had two each.
 
Graham Fisher '16 was the winning pitcher, working seven innings and scattering six hits while fanning five.
 
Grinnell got three runs in the second inning with the aid of Bell's RBI single to left, Takayesu's sacrifice fly to left and a wild pitch.
 
In the third, the Pioneers put four more runs on the board as Mack had a solo homer to right, Hammond hit an infield single, Inafuku singled through the left side to score a run and Takayesu had a single to right to push across a run.
 
Cornell got a run in the top of the fourth, but Grinnell answered with a run in the bottom of the inning as Hammond hit an RBI single up the middle. The teams traded runs again in the fifth, with Grinnell's coming on Ryan Penaflor's '16 RBI single up the middle.
 
The Pioneers tacked on another run in the sixth on a groundout. Grinnell ended the contest in the eighth with two runs on Hammond's single through the left side.
 
Grinnell managed just four hits against three Cornell pitchers in the second game. The Rams got on the board first with three runs in the first inning, but the Pioneers got a run in the second on Inafuku's RBI groundout.
 
Cornell made it 7-1 in the fifth inning and 8-1 in the sixth. It became 9-1 in the ninth before Grinnell got a run in the bottom of the inning on Inafuku's RBI single to right.
 
John Essig '16 suffered the loss for Grinnell.
 
The Pioneers head to the Midwest Conference Tournament this coming weekend, hosted by Ripon College. They'll meet St. Norbert College in the first round.